[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 186 (Tuesday, December 6, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8370-S8371]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
WORK WELL TOGETHER
Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I wish to speak this afternoon about
a lesson that Washington, DC can learn from Maryville, TN, which is my
hometown. It is a lesson that most of us learned in kindergarten and I
learned in my mother's kindergarten, which was in a converted garage in
our backyard, and it was three words: ``Work well together.''
The latest example of that was all over the sports pages of my
hometown on Sunday: ``Historic Championship: Maryville Wins the 13th
State Title--Most Ever.'' Our football team has learned to work well
together. They earned their second consecutive State championship, as
the newspaper said. They beat Memphis Whitehaven. I watched the game on
statewide television. Their record this year was 15 and 0. It was their
ninth State title and ninth perfect season under an extraordinary
coach, George Quarles, who has won 179 games and lost 13 in his career
in Maryville. This is the most State titles of any school in
Tennessee's history. The team scored 35 or more points in 109 of Coach
Quarles' first 191 games. Maryville has averaged 30 or more points in
12 of its 13 seasons under coach Quarles and its senior quarterback
this year, Patton Robinette, who has scholarships from good schools
everywhere, was named the Gatorade Tennessee Football Player of the
Year, part of which has to do with his academic credentials. He has a
straight A-plus average.
This leads me to the second thing they work well together on in
Maryville, TN. The Maryville city schools were named the best overall
school district in the State, based on their academic performance, by
the State Collaborative on Reforming Education. The Maryville city
schools recently received all As on their State math, reading, social
studies, science, and writing assessments. According to the Tennessean,
Maryville city schools have the second highest test scores in the State
in reading and math. The high school was selected as one of three
finalists in the prized category of high schools ``based primarily on
student achievement gains and progress over time.'' More than 80
percent of Maryville High School students were proficient or advanced
in math, 88 percent in reading/language arts. More than 90 percent
graduated in 2010 from the high school. Four seniors were National
Merit semifinalists. 48 percent of Maryville High School students who
took the ACT college prep test last year met all four benchmarks for
college and career readiness--English, math, reading, and science--
compared to 15 percent Statewide and 25 percent nationally. So the
football team and the students have learned to work well together,
academically and athletically, at Maryville High School.
How did this all happen? I know a little bit about this. I am a proud
graduate, as the Presiding Officer may have suspected by now, of
Maryville High School. I have wondered about this for a long time: How
could it have had such success in so many things? It is not the richest
town in the State by a long shot. Most families in Maryville would
describe themselves as middle income.
One indicator of why they succeed and why they achieve so much
excellence in so many ways in their schools
[[Page S8371]]
is that the town devotes about 70 percent of its budget to its schools.
It is in a county where about half the citizens--50 percent of the
citizens of 100,000 in Blount County--have a library card. It is a
place where--at least it was when I was there--if you get in trouble at
school, you get in trouble at home. I can remember being called to the
principal's office and administered pretty stern discipline when I was
in the eighth grade, and I received the same treatment when I got home,
even though my father was chairman of the school board. So there was
none of this business about parents blaming the teacher and the
principal for what the child had done.
But I think the school principal, who is new to the town--Greg
Roach--said it best. I saw him being interviewed at half time during
the football game last Saturday night.
He was asked: How did this happen? How did you have this champion
football team more than any other school in the State and then you are
named the best school district in the State? How can you do that all at
once?
He said: Well, it is a town school and when something happens,
everybody shows up.
Well, they showed up at Tennessee Tech for the football game last
Saturday night, but they also show up at the annual academic awards
banquets. I have been to those, and over the last several years it is
more like a sporting contest, with this student winning the Spanish
championship and this one doing well in Latin and getting the same
kinds of honors, awards, scholarships and pats on the back that
football players do.
This emphasis on excellence in education and athletics is not
something new to Maryville, TN. My grandfather sold his farm in the
county to move into town so that my father could go to school, and my
aunt said my father felt as though he had died and gone to heaven when
he had that opportunity. My father, who was an elementary school
principal after World War II, ran for the city school board with four
other men and women and they stayed on the board as a ticket. They were
elected every year as a ticket. They stayed there for 25 years, with
the whole objective of improving the quality of the education in the
Maryville city school system.
While all that was going on, my mother taught in the preschool
program--really the only one in our county at that time, although I
think Mrs. Pesterfield also had a preschool program. But Mrs.
Alexander's--I used to call it lower institution of learning--had 25 3-
and 4-year-olds and 25 5-year-olds in the afternoon. She was lobbying
the whole time to the school board on which my father served to put her
out of business and start a public kindergarten, which they eventually
did in our State.
I used to talk about the Maryville schools and the community of
Maryville when I was running for President 20 years ago, and my friend,
Bill Bennet, who was also a U.S. Education Secretary, was chairman of
my campaign. He would say to me: Lamar, not every community in America
is Maryville, TN, and I know that. I know that. But I think a lot more
could be. There are a lot of theories about what makes a good school,
but I think Principal Roach may have it about right. It is a town
school, and when something happens, everybody shows up.
I think our new speaker of the house in Tennessee, Beth Harwell, had
it right too when she observed that our State legislature finished work
early. They had some disagreements but worked well together, got some
results, and she said they learned in kindergarten to work well
together, and that maybe that would be a good lesson for Washington,
DC.
Well, I think Speaker Harwell is right. The example of the Maryville
football team and the Maryville students is also right. When everybody
shows up when something is going on, and when people work well
together, good things happen. Working well together--in our case,
bipartisanship--is not a goal, just as working well together was not
the goal of the football team. They wanted the championship. It was not
the goal of the students. They wanted the scholarship. But they knew
they had to work well together as a community to get a result.
They got a championship football team. They got the best school
district in the State. Perhaps that is a lesson for the Senate as we
seek to take the very difficult responsibilities we have and earn the
respect of the men and women of this country who hired us and sent us
here to solve problems.
That is why today I would like to celebrate the success of the
championship football team of Maryville High School and the
championship school district of Maryville, TN, and suggest their lesson
of working well together might be a good lesson for us.
I yield the floor.
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